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Selected schools in B.C. will become “innovation schools” that will serve as testing grounds for the type of personalized, flexible learning that the B.C. education system is moving toward.

Education Minister Peter Fassbender announced the new B.C. Innovation Strategy at an event, B.C. Focus on Learning: Rising to the Global Challenge, hosted by the Ministry of Education. The event brought together several international experts with about 150 B.C. education and business leaders and students at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue to talk about making our education system more innovative and flexible.

“We cannot stand on our laurels. We need to look at where is the world going. How do we help the young people realize their passions and their dreams? The economic future of our province depends on well-prepared, well-skilled young people,” Fassbender said.

The new strategy is a plan for schools to work together to try new things and to gather and share evidence that what they’re doing is working. Fassbender will be touring the province to promote this strategy, in which the selected schools will have greater latitude and support to try new teaching practices. The elementary and secondary schools will be identified in April and each school will be matched up with a post-secondary institution that will work to evaluate the changes.

“This will be disciplined innovation. With greater latitude and freedom comes greater scrutiny and responsibility to communicate how things are going,” Fassbender said.

The announcement did not include any funding and Fassbender said it isn’t tied to a dollar figure because much of it is already happening in schools.

Citing examples where innovation is already taking place, Fassbender mentioned both Thomas Haney secondary school in Maple Ridge, where students learn on a flexible timetable in open settings, and Norma Rose Point elementary in Vancouver, which is designed with open spaces to encourage collaborative learning.

Yong Zhao, director at the Institute for Global and Online Education in Oregon, said change is necessary in education so that each student’s talents are enhanced.

“Our traditional education system is about fixing a deficit,” Zhao said. “We prescribe a set of curriculum that everybody should know. If you know it, you’re good. If you don’t, we’re going to fix you. We measure this by testing. I can tell you that test scores do not really matter that much in life.”

Zhao said standardized testing doesn’t help individual learners because it doesn’t measure things like different learning styles or skills like collaboration or communication. Zhao said the existing system drives down creativity and that a paradigm shift is needed so that the student’s themselves manage their own education doing meaningful, authentic things that will motivate them.

“One thing we know for sure is you can’t fix your horse wagon to get to the moon,” Zhao said. “I think a new paradigm for education is going to be about enhancing the individual’s talents. Education is to enhance everyone’s strengths and follow their passion.”

Andreas Schleicher, director for Education and Skills at the OECD spoke to the forum via Skype from Hong Kong. He said the OECD is trying to adjust its testing methods to better measure what is important.

“What matters today most is different ways of thinking — problem solving, creativity — it’s the tools of thinking that matter today,” Schleicher said. “What is important today is not how you solve a problem, but how you connect with others to solve problems.”

In a comment that was met with many questions from teachers, Schleicher said it is not more money that creates the strongest education systems.

“Many of the world’s most successful education systems have got there not by pouring more money into the system. They’ve made very difficult decisions,” Schleicher said.

As an example, he said many high-performing education systems have professional teachers who have a great deal of autonomy, but they also teach large numbers of students.

Representatives of the business community posed many questions including why parents don’t encourage their children to go into trades, why more companies don’t hire apprentices, why schools don’t teach more computer coding skills and many others.

Tony MacKay, CEO at the Centre for Strategic Education in Australia, was the event’s facilitator. Other speakers included Stuart Shanker, professor of philosophy and psychology at York University, who spoke about the adolescent brain, and David Albury, director at the Global Educational Leadership Program in the United Kingdom, who spoke about bringing business, educators and the community together to support education.

Marc Kielburger, co-founder of Free the Children, spoke about the importance of helping young people find their passions, investing in citizenship and the importance of soft skills like communication.

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‘Innovation schools’ will test, evaluate new education models

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